Are pesticides turning into poison spray?

Farmers do not have basic knowledge of usage of pesticides, a survey by the National Institute of Advanced Studies found.

| TNN | Sep 17, 2010, 05:46 IST

Lusciously sweet but dig a little deeper and export-quality grapes from Pune will reveal a darker truth, a slow poison of sorts. Until last year, the vineyards there used to receive around 20 rounds of pesticide spraying but with demand abroad going up, Pune’s grape growers are now resorting to no less than 25 rounds. Further down south, in the cotton fields of Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, the crop receives 25-30 rounds of pesticide.
If the massive endosulfan poisoning in Dakshin Kannada and Kerala was not pointer enough to the problem, research by the School of Natural Sciences and Engineering at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore throws up disturbing trends in pesticide usage nationwide.

While usage has gone up many fold, pesticide drift and methods of usage – including spraying of a chemical cocktail by farmers wearing little protective gear – continue to pose serious health risks to users.

According to P K Shetty, who heads research at the School of Natural Sciences and Engineering, the field surveys conducted every year in around 28 pesticide hotspot districts have thrown up few changes.

"The government has banned DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and some other organochlorides but there is no ban yet on endosulfan. In fact, India is one of the largest users of World Health Organization (WHO) class 1A pesticides, including phorate, phosphorus, phosphamidon and fenthion that are extremely hazardous," says Shetty. "Our surveys show that nothing has changed on the ground."

There is little thought to integrated pest management and pesticide stewardship, let alone adopting safer alternatives. "Farmers, who are the end users, do not have basic knowledge of how to use pesticides. For instance, the optimum dose of monocrotophos per litre of water is 1.3ml to manage the paddy pest, but our survey respondents in Raichur and Bellary admitted to using 4-5 ml per litre," says Shetty. "Our recent surveys showed that in some parts, especially Punjab, farmers are mixing pesticides. About 17.71% of respondents in the selected districts were using a cocktail of pesticides."

Labelling has not worked in any of these districts because none are in local languages, nor do they use pictograms. Nor is there any information on product hazards, appropriate modes of storage and handling. About 69% of the respondents covered only their faces with towels or cloth to avoid the pungent smell but used no other protective gear, says Shetty.

Besides, most respondents said they reused emptied pesticide containers for storing kerosene and diesel. "It is important to triple-rinse empty pesticide containers before recycling or disposal, it can remove 99.99% of pesticides," says Shetty. "The issue of obsolete pesticide stocks has not even been addressed. India has at least 200 tonnes of obsolete pesticide. The cost of safe disposal of such obsolete pesticide is, in some cases, much higher than the cost of their procurement."

Drifting danger

The pesticide poisoning in Kerala and Karnataka districts, particularly among cashew plantation workers, is a case in point.

The aerial spraying of endosulfan in the plantations has severely afflicted the farmers, leading to congenital abnormalities, mental retardation, cancer and infertility among other conditions. Endosulfan was also found in the blood samples of children living nearby.

While the use of endosulfan as a veterinary drug has been banned in India, following the wipeout of vultures, its use as a pesticide continues. Any kind of pesticide used in fields drifts and contaminates the soil and water sources nearby but precautions need to be taken.

"Recently, we started visiting district hospitals to check on pesticide poisoning cases. Mild poisoning in the form of diahorrea, giddiness, headache and breathing problems were reported but largely, farmers are unaware of the long-term health impact," Shetty explained. While only 5% of the farmers use integrated pest management (IPM) in India, the huge Rs 7,000 crore pesticide market is growing at 3.2% every year.

Residual effect

A report released by the School of Natural Sciences and Engineering in 2008, 'Crop Protection Stewardship in India: Wanted or Unwanted’ and published in the journal Current Science, says the pesticide residue problem has affected agriculture widely.

Small cardamom consumes more than 100kg per hectare per year of phorate in Kerala. The pesticides used are quinalphos, monocrotophos, chlorpyriphos, fenthion, methyl parathion, endosulfan and emisan. But because of the high pesticide residue in the crop, the export of cardamom has reduced by 80%. Many other crops have also been rejected internationally due to high residues.

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